This calculator shows you how much money you can make by leaving a sum of money in an account at a certain interest rate. It helps you to understand the difference that tax-sheltered compounding can make, and in addition shows you the effect of inflation. Enter the amount of money that you wish to deposit initially, the expected interest rate, and the expected inflation rate. The calculator will show you the amount that will accumulate in the account over different time spans both with and without taxes. It will also show you how much money that initial amount will buy in the future because of inflation. That way you can see if an investment actually grows (beats inflation).
It is particularly interesting to note the massive difference between the taxed and non-taxed numbers after 20 or 30 years. There are several ways to save money that make use of completely tax free compounding:
The inflation column shows you the effect of inflation on your initial deposit. For example, if you deposit $1,000 in an account and the inflation rate is 4%, then the value in the inflation column will be $1,040 after one year. This means that in one year it will take $1,040 to buy what costs you $1,000 to buy today. If your investments do not at least exceed the rate of inflation, you are losing money. If you look at the account value and it is less than the value in the inflation column over time, then your investment is actually losing money. Taxes often have that effect on lower-performing investments like savings accounts and CDs.
